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Pitch Perfect Karaoke
BuffJoe writes "The folks paid to make newer and improved karaoke machines have discovered a way to make even the most tone deaf singers sound great with a new technology for perfect-pitch karaoke!"
Make your cracks about Karaoke if you like, but read the article- there are hooks
for scoring singing, correcting pitch, and more. Should also make those Karaoke parties a little
more tolerable.
"Thank you NASA"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Till the fat lady sings Karaoke!
Can we have something like Karaoke Karaoke Revolution? That'd be sweet as hell, with ratings and everything...
Karaoke sound systems provider Taito Corp said on Tuesday it had teamed up with a U.S. professor and chipmaker Analog Devices Inc on technology that could give even the most tone-deaf crooner perfect pitch.
First Bubble Bobble, then Bust a Move (or Puzzle Bobble to some), now a pitch-perfect Karaoke system... Go Taito!
Maybe now I'll actually sing Karaoke.
The Antares Autotune has been available in rack form for quite a while... You'd be surprised how many rock acts lean a little too heavily on that device to clean up their live vocal performances...
hell Rosie O'donnel thanked the device in her christmas CD (although c'mon... in-tune/key bad music is still bad music)
*Shrug*
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Then the job is completely done.
Japanese for obnoxious drunk with microphone.
Your new name is Micmac, the fuckable midget. Also, how come the british don't brush their teeth and are so fucking ugly?
Early versions will adjust the pitch, future versions will go beyond that! Just think, someday I can "sing" the words along with the music, and due to their nifty software it will sound exactly as if I had the CD in.... Wait, if it sounds the same, why not just put in the CD? Doesn't this whole thing take some of the point out of it? I mean, bad singing included, that's the fun of Karaoke... laughing at people who try to sing along but suck...
...for all of the manufactured boy bands out there. Remember the Party Posse on the Simpsons?
but now everyone sounds like Stephen Hawking.
...now her technology makes it to the masses.
http://www.mideastchamber.com/podium/political/112 . tml
Taito Corp, those of us that have girlfriend who love to sing kareoke...we salute you...
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
My plan was to have the music slow down and speed up to match the pitch of the singer. Much more reliable... if not quite as pleasing to the ear.
Eventually, he said, Taito may use the technology to reconfigure a singer's errant tones to the proper pitch, without otherwise altering the sound.
Forget Karaokee bars... They need to give these to many recording artists!
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
If you compare human voice to any music instrument out there, you probably agree with me when I say that human voice beats them all. Just think about your favourite singer. Although this karaoke thing is "cool", I don't believe technology itself can ever produce such emotionally rich voice that the best singers have. It's not just about singing technically properly - it's about emotions also.
Wait, this has already happened.
Does this mean Britney won't have to lip sync anymore?
-- Button up, your ignorance is showing
~Every time you are near?
~Just like me, they long to be
~Close to you
~Why do stars fall down from the sky
~Every time you walk by?
Everybody sing along! Kareoke is wonderful, ever since I got my Taito PerfectPitch 9000!
~Just like me, they long to be
~Close to you.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Something good came out of Brittney Speare's career! Now maybe I can be a teen idol pop start too!
:D
BlackGriffen
At first this technology was used to make the chipmunks, then used for Barbara Striesand to record and album in only one take. Later it found it's true calling in making fake boy bands [New Kids] sound like they can sing. Who says technology isn't making life better!!
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
and all the others now using auto-tune boxes as an effect. You can set these things to quantize to a diatonic scale and just "snap" from one pitch to another not allowing any slide at all. I'm sure you've heard it.
I'm also sure you've not heard it when the thresholds are set a little looser.
It was kinda neat the first time I heard it, but jeeze.. it's getting old.
Half the reason for going to Karaoke is laughing at how bad your friends and other bar patrons are at singing. If it corrects this for you, ya might as well just play the jukebox and lip-sync...
-vic
Can we all pitch in and get one of these for Brittney Spears?
Do a google search before posting.
girl bands with bigger breasts and more ass shaking!
:(
Although this sounds good at first, unfortunately, radio play will be swamped by the promotional music ventures
Didn't they used to make games like Double Dragon?
...Really.
Most 80s video game makers are now, believe it or not, in the karaoke business.
'Should also make those Karaoke parties a little more tolerable.'
Now wait just a minute here, I don't know where you are from friend but Karaoke is the hottest thing to do! Why, who wouldn't enjoy listening to their favorite songs being decimated by their half-drunk friends? I can think of nothing I'd rather be doing on a Wednesday night at Bill's Kill 'n Grill!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
correct me if i'm wrong, but i thought the fun of karaoke was laughing at your friends when they suck.
how will this help?
The Backstreet Boys have been using it for years.
Thus, bad karaoke is still bad karaoke. Good for all of us with pitch, we'll still impress. :)
Adjusting the voice on the fly is going to be a different problem -- it would probably be easiest solved by hard coding the Hz at each given moment of a song (with some fuzzy boundaries) and then running the mic input through.
But what fun is that? How can we be impressed by the guys who can sing A-Ha's 'Take on Me' if everyone can do it?
Everybody was Karaoke singing, those lyrics went by as fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit fright'ning, but they kept up with expert timing
There was funky drunken kids from funky Collegetown
They were smoking tokes up, they were taking bong's down
It's an ancient Chinese art, and everybody knew their part
Common friend don't be a stiff, just start singin' from the hip
Everybody was Karaoke singing, those lyrics went by as fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit fright'ning, but they kept up with expert timing
There was funky Developer guy, who doesn't get out much
He said, here comes the new tech, let's code it on
He took the mike, out of the stand, started swaying with the band
A sudden comotion made him stiff, now he's into a brandnew rip
Everybody was Karaoke singing, those lyrics went by as fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit fright'ning, but they kept up with expert timing
uh-oh-uh-oh...(repeat 4 times)
Everybody was Karaoke singing, those lyrics went by as fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit fright'ning, but they kept up with expert timing
uh-oh-uh-oh...Karaoke singing, uh-oh-uh-oh... had to be fast as lightning...
uh-oh-uh-oh...(repeat 3 times) code on code on code on
uh-oh-uh-oh... yeah yeah, uh-oh-uh-oh... ***slashdotted out***
-YoGrark
"No Gnu's is not necessarily good gnu's"
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Agreed. Karaoke is also supposed to be painful for the non-drinkers... this encourages drinking to numb the senses.
My sig sucks.
Sure, this corrects people who are off-key, but what about those of us who intentionally change notes or tempo? I don't want to have my choices vetoed by vocoder.
At a recent comedy show, one of the acts had a one of the new Karaoke mics. This thing hooked directly to the PA system and the TV. It appears the device would display a few scenic pictures with typical power point style cuts between them. On the background they had two lines of text for the songs and it would highlight the words about the same time they should be sung. Once a song was finished, a score was shown which was always very high and appeard to have nothing to do with the talent of the singer. Aparently the device does allow new songs to be downloaded and it cost about US$500. If you want to comedy Karaoke, just remember its time to move on to something else when people start leaving the room.
What makes this any different than the machines Britney Spears, N'Stink, The Backdoor Boys, etc. use?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Did I mention that I killed someone last Saturday while singing karaoke? :)
:)
I was in The Royal, Hartlepool, and after a few drinks and the prompting of a few lady friends I decided to sing American Pie...big mistake.
So, I sang the song, I sucked but i didn't care - its good fun either way, then we left the pub (quickly I might add). To our surpise the entire road outside had been blocked off and the area was swarming with police cars and ambulances.
What had happened was, around the same time I was singing, someone threw themselves out of the thrid floor of the pub. I have since been branded the karaoke killer so I welcome any device that will reduce the number of song related deaths caused by muppets who cant sing doing karaoke
On another note if your in the vicinity of the Royal in Hartlepool, UK (Church Street), I will be doing a repeat performance on saturday.
Song requests to chris@wickedbass.net!
Hearing people make fools out of themselves because they can't sing is part of the fun. At least for the first 10 min or so.
Aliens? Magnetic Rings?! Bah! Who needs that when we have
A friend of mine lives in a flat upstairs from a Karaoke bar. As one of the few places in town in range for broadband we drag our PCs over there for LAN parties and such. Friday and Saturday nights usually end up in battles between our stereo equipment and theirs. There are no winners... only causalities. Something like this could really save lives.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
...of what I've been saying about some of the more "talent-challenged" in the top 40 music industry..."You can clean up anything in the studio."
Yes, but can it fix Yoko Ono's voice?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I mean, seeing how bad some people sing? I've only been to a Karoke bar once or twice, but that was certainly part of the fun: Seeing someone up there completely butchering "Hotel California".
an intriguing behavioral trait involved in music perception and is defined as the ability to recognize the pitch of a musical tone without an external reference pitch
For example, a professor at my beloved alma mater was able to identify a pitch by referring to its frequency in Hz! The phrase describes someone at a different end of the musical spectrum than the idiots at which this product is aimed.
-jason
There's also a team in Spain developing Voice Impersonator Karaoke technology.
Now singers can morph their own bland and off-key voices into a full rich Elvis (or anyone else for whom a digital voice template has been computed). Why be yourself, when you can be The King!
>;k
I saw real-time pitch correction a few years ago on Tomorrows World, too late guys
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Ah. So now we can see donkeys singing, "I like big butts and I cannot lie", *perfectly*.
You make joke, but apparently Karaoke bars in Manilla have stopped playing Frank Sinatra's "My Way" because of the amount of violence and death that ensues.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Where have you been? The music industry has been doing this for years- taking mediocre (at best) talent (which fits an image) into the studio, throwing every technical trick in the book at them to make them sound good, package it and market it. How else could Britney Spears and Kid Rock exist in the music industry. I can't wait until Britney "unplugged" so they can haul 2 tons of pitch shifting equipment on the set to treat her voice.
Great, but isn't the point of karoke that you stink and can't make it as a pro singer? I dunno, this kinds strikes me like Led Zeppelin on CD -- those hisses and pops and scratches from the vinyl are part of the music, man!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
It's called "beer". If you have enough of it everyone sounds great at a karaoke party.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
If they could just do something about the dancing...
I have a karaoke story to tell,
There was a spell in my life about 2 years ago where I spent 6 months straight, 7 days a week, 7 martini's a night at what has been named the best karaoke bar in san jose by the san jose metro.
I popularized such forgotten hit's as Yes we have no Banana's by Spike Jones, To dream the impossible dream from
Man of La
Mancha, and brought new flair to Baby Got Back by Sir Mix Alot. In the
beginning I was a scared lone singer up on stage, my voice was terrible and I
was afraid.
I began to conquer my songs, one at a time. I would come in before any of the
other singers and start around 6:00. Each song I conquered represented a fear,
so in essence, I was conquering my fears.
I had a buddy that taught me the ways. Our whole thing was we were
"The Rat Pack" We got other singers into this clique and sort of set
the place on fire not only with our alcohol finely tuned voices, but with our
stage presence and showmanship as well.
The rat pack ended when Frank Sinatra had a kid. I miss those harmonic
days of bliss long since past.
So drawing from what I know makes or breaks a karaoke superstar, and applying
it to this comment, I honestly have to say that I don't think this will totally
help all people. You still have issue's with stage fright, crowd response,
the singers harmonic vocalizations and how well they dance around and put on a
show.
There is also somewhat of a joke in karaoke. Sometimes people TRY
and sing off key or tempo. It's what you do with a song that makes people laugh
or clap. Not just how well you sing.
If I walk in a forest and find a square root, I can still call it a square root even though the expression "square root" has another meaning for mathematicians.
In this case, if the Karaoke makes your pitch perfect, then it is a "pitch perfect karaoke". Independent of the fact that the expression "perfect pitch" can mean something else.
no, this article is nothing but the implementation of the latest WWII technology; a VOCODER.
free (as in mp3s) electronic music
This new machine proposes to take the engeneer's seat as well as the processing equipment's. It will most likely read a signal telling what pitch the singer should be at and analize the incomming signal from the mic and based on a comparison of the two shift up or down.
One problem I have always noticed with live, real-time pitch shifting (NOTE: not auto-correcting, simply pitch shifting) is there is a delay, a millisecond or two, but enough to be audible. Methinks adding all the analysis time into the mix will add a little more delay and the singing will sound off! Hopefully they'll get it running smoothly...even if it takes all the fun out of Karaoke.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
There has been many products like this over the past several years. One of the ones that I have had the opportunity to use was the Korg iH. It is based on the technology developed by IVL (a company from my home town of Victoria, BC, Canada. WOO!)
Anyway, way back when I was working at a music store in Victoria we got a few of these in. They never really sold very well, but were pretty amazing if you knew how to use them. Found a review of the iH on Google.
IVL does some very neat stuff. Check out their Web site.
...it would be more fun to add a synthesizer and a vocoder to a karaoke machine, esp if one person was trying to play the right notes while the other was singing, but who knows what i'm talking about...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
N/T
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
http://www.darwinawards.com/legends/legends1999
HA!
;-)
Good job, whoever you were
This assesses singing skill mathematically," Kitamura said.
Great. Now, if we assess everything mathematically, we'll eventually live in a perfect world, right? I don't see any flaws in this logic, do you?
If I could get a mathematician to rate my movies for me, cook my food and write my laws for me, I'd really be living the high life. Mathematicians are definitely God's most perfect creatures.
I've found a cattle prod has much the same effect and costs far less. Also had some success with a baseball bat.
This can still have horrendous results.
This vs maybe adjusting the music, but also adjusting the sound of the singer so that the singer stays in tune.
This would be like the simpson rig, and would be truly impressive technology.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
For example, if you know what to listen for (hard 'edges' to notes on vocals) you can hear it all over Britney's music. It's also being used as a vocoder-type effect (synth filtered by voice) on some recordings. The song on Kid Rock's hit CD that he sang on (it was country sounding) used it extensively.
Popular songs that have used a vocoder effect with hard transitions between pitches:However, use of the vocoder on some other songs is more subtle. Sometimes, the vocoder's pitch is set halfway between the pitch the slut is actually singing and the pitch that her producers want her to sing, which produces a much less synthetic perception. (Following a single voice's pitch is straightforward: square-root the signal to restore the fundamental, apply a 4th order low pass filter to remove harmonics, and count sign changes. If you want to know more, mail me.)
Oops! I did it again. I just described how to do something that probably infringes a dozen patents worldwide.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There's hope for Britney!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
as has been said, pitch correction is old hat. But even beyond that...
If you're going to have a karaoke machine that corrects pitch, why not just turn on the radio?
I don't know if I really trust a machine to turn my voice into something that other people will want to hear.
If I am at a Karaoke bar...and drink enough beer, I might not actually sound any better...but at least I will not care that I suck...and will not remember it well enough to be embarrassed in the morning.
Though if I mixed the machine with alcohol, maybe I will have the best of both worlds
vocoding is taking an orignal sound and filtering it with the nuances of vocal frequencies. In other words it manipulates the freqeuncies of a source sound by using a second sound.
However, if you vocode against a pulsetrain that follows the melody, the properties of the pulsetrain (equal power in all frequencies) don't affect the frequency. Thus, it behaves exactly the same as pitch correction. The biggest algorithmic difference between vocoder and pitch correction is that pitch correction separates the signal into buzz (periodic vowel sounds) from the hiss (noiselike breath and consonant sounds) and processes only the buzz, whereas the cheaper vocoder implementations generally assume that the incoming voice signal is entirely buzz, making the voice harder-edged and turning 's' consonants into 'z'.
exaple of pitch correction: Sher - Do you believe in life after love or whatever the hell that song is.
Look in my previous comment. It's called "Cher - Believe". Boycott Cher.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What's assymetric?
"We can do this thanks to ADSL (assymetric digital subscriber lines) and fiber-to-the-home."
Writers imply. Readers infer.
NOOOOOOOO! Now I'm going to hear that song for the rest of the week!
Just think, someday I can "sing" the words along with the music, and due to their nifty software it will sound exactly as if I had the CD in.
Defendent:
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What is the point of karaoke?
Having never done it myself I would guess thusly:
*to sing along to a famous/popular song, and in the process test your voice amongst a jury of your peers (most likely trashed of their nuts and laughing their asses off)
Introducing this technology to karaoke has no point.
You may as well mime along to the original CD
If this makes people sound ok, give it to Christina Has No Haira, NSTINK, The Back Road Audults, and crew.
it's not country, it's an "Arena Anthem" if I ever heard one.
to get up in front of a bunch of strangers and sound like a jackass?
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. - Tennessee Williams
...as in "Hearing her voice makes me want to SPEW"
Here's how this thing works.
First, they play a song with the vocals removed so that someone can sing along, like standard karaoke.
Now, here's how this new technology works. Once that someone starts singing, their microphone is automatically turned off, and the original vocal tracks are added back in.
I hear it sounds great!
For two months I would go to a local bar for karaoke night to drink. It was great until I thought it would be a good idea to go a night without drinking. I was only there for an haft an hour and haven't gone back.
The journey is better then the end.
People who go out to Karaoke bars a lot (the regulars) tend to be fairly good singers, and the thing that keeps them coming back (and running up big drink tabs with their friends) is the chance to show off what good singers they are.
If the performances are masked to hide pitch errors, you negate the opportunity for those poor slobs to stand out from the crowd for three and a half minutes, and they will stop going, leaving the bar with nobody but the sloppy drunks who think they know how to sing "Friends In Low Places" but can't remember any of the verses.
The purpose of running Karaoke is to make money, not to make perfect music. The people considering buying a system like this might want to keep that in mind.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
However, a pitch bender isn't the solution I'd prefer for these people. Personally, I'm thinking tasers :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Csound, the technology mentioned in the article, is free as in root beer. You can download the source code and compile and run it on Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can download Csound from http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/~jpff/dream.html#Csound
Unfortunately Csound isn't free as in speech though. Its source code is under a copyright by MIT that restricts it to "educational and research purposes only". Analog Devices, the company mentioned in the article, has a commercial license for Csound.
For more information about Csound, check out http://www.csounds.com
There is no way for a machine to know exactly when a singer is "out of tune" due to bending up into a note or just simply plain out of tune due to crappy ability. The automatic tempo syncronization that they are touting for now has been around since 1982, Kahler (of the cam loaded tremolo bar fame) used to sell such an item for syncing MIDI files to a human player, typically the drummer. Real time pitch "correction" boxes just don't work like these people would lead you to believe, usually the musician has to perform with the box's capabilities in mind for it to "work" properly. As we say in the studio, "you can't shine a turd".
As for using pitch correction in studios, big deal. The first rule of sound recording is "any sound is ultimately usable". Most typically this is used for vocalists who just can't reach that required note. Most guitar rock is written and played around certain idiosyncrasies of the instrument (most commonly the use of keys which take advantage of the way distorted chords based on open strings sound), which means transpostion (which will work transparently with any other non guitar like instrument) to a lower key more suitable to vocalist is usually not an option, since those guitar specific effects will possibly be lost. So out comes the Pitch Shifter. This is usually when slowing down the tape too much would result in the dreaded chipmunk voice effect due to the unnatural formants speed up when played at normal speed. Sometimes the artifacts introduced by the Pitch Shifter are actually wanted (see first rule of recording). And if that singer can actually sing in the song's key range but just can't sing in tune, well you gotta do what ya gotta do. There is nothing natural about the recording process for popular music, it is a completely artificial product, even if the player is in full command of his instrument.
The above poster certainly knows what I'm talking about, which is more than I can say about the PR guy trying to sell this crap.
Finally a solution to copy protection, piracy, and all that. "Borrow" a music only version and record your own vocals. Pay yourself the royalties and never support the nasty RIAA again.
Profanity - The sign of a small mind trying to express itself.
For those who have been to Japan, and heard drunken old men singing in the next section of the Korean Barb'q' palace, you will consider this a gift from God.
"most tone deaf singers sound great "
hey, hasn't sherr already mastered this technology?
Now that would make a hit song...
Err... Sorry...
just what we needed.. a ton more bad karaoke, only with Auto-Tune (audio plugin) on it in real time..
:) haha that'll be great :D
kind of an intersting idea, but at the same time verrrry scarrrrrry
it just means that tone-deaf people will sound like cher thru a vocoder
they'll ask, "why does it sound like that?" and you'll say, because you blow goats, my dear"
I Agree With This Post
errr... wasn't it the Navy, not NASA?
yvan eth nioj, right?
...I believe that most karoke machines that use MIDI based files (as opposed to an an actual audio backing) can do this with no problem. I just don't see a perfect real time pitch correction happening. Popular vocals are chock full of "incorrect" pitch selection, what this amounts to is tonal quantization. What resolution is the guy who writes the 'vocal exactness pitch tracking map' is gonna set his sampling resolution? 1 millisecond, 1 picosecond? Will he have access to the uncluttered vocal track from the original multitrack recording, of will he trying to pick it out from a merged mix? Lots of beforehand busywork. But as you say, it would be interesting to see how it really works.
Doesn't it? Isn't the point of going to Karaoke to get drunk and sing out of tune?
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--